A pair of scientists claim to have produced the world’s first metallic hydrogen, something that’s long been thought of as theoretically possible but rather tricky to actually achieve.
The Royal Society For Chemistry reports that Mikhail Eremets and Ivan Troyan of the Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz claim to have succeeded in creating metallic hydrogen through immense pressures and low temperatures; we’re talking 220GPa and 30K, which is hardly an easy thing to achieve in itself. Under those conditions, Eremets and Troyan discovered that the resistance of the hydrogen increased by 20 per cent, indicating that it may be displaying characteristics of a metal.
Science being science, there’s some debate about all of this; the article notes that metallic hydrogen should perhaps have much greater resistance, to the tune of some 4,000 per cent.
If they can crack it, however, it opens up a whole host of possibilities, from room temperature superconductors to high powered rocket fuel. [RSC via Geekosystem]
Image: Hugo90
Grim
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 11:56 AMSo metallic hydrogen in incredible environmental conditions leads to room-temperature superconductors? I’m interested in how that works.
Greg
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 12:06 PMDid they learn nothing from the Hindenburg??!!
Serioulsy though, this could revolutionise our entire civilization from decentralised power production, (hydrogen cell power production) transport, uber long life batteries for mobile devices.
Grim
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 12:11 PMHow? Presumably as soon as you remove the pressure and relax the cooling it’s going to melt back into a liquid.
Slurp
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 12:18 PMWhy would you make this presumption?
It’s not frozen hydrogen. its metallic hydrogen.
Paganic
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 12:41 PMIt is in effect frozen Hyrdrogen. The word metallic is used to describe it’s electrical properties. At room temperature and pressure, this stuff would boil off in an instant
Ozoneocean
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 12:50 PMThat’s pretty much it. I’d go further though and say that it would explode pretty catastrophically.
Extremely so.
deadnotsleeping
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 1:27 PMWhy are you all commenting on something you clearly know nothing about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_hydrogen
Ozoneocean
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 1:47 PMSorry , but your wiki link only talks about theoretical aproaches to achieving a metallic state and some of the properties of the substance, NOTHING at all about how it would fair under normal pressure and temperature conditions. So the fact that you posted the link after making that comment reply implies you know even less than us.
Dave
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 3:55 PMNo, it isn’t frozen hydrogen. Did you not read the Wiki properly? Metallic hydrogen is an example of degenerate matter, it certainly is not “frozen”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_matter
It doesn’t have any of the same characteristics of normal hydrogen as it is in a completely different state. It also cannot exist at normal temperatures or pressures(which is why it doesn’t talk about this in the wiki). I’d suggest you understand what you are trying to talk about first before accusing someone of understanding less than yourself.
Ozoneocean
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 6:02 PMNone of us were saying it was “frozen” and if it cannot exist in normal temperatures and pressures then this ties in exactly with our speculations. So in effect you’ve admitted not even understanding what we were discussing, let alone the substance in question
Grim
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 1:25 PMBasic chemistry makes me make this presumption. Things melt, boil or sublimate at given points of temperature and pressure.
AAron
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 4:11 PMThey learnt lots from the Hindenburg. It wasn’t hydrogen’s “fault”, it was the highly flammable dope used to seal the fabric that caught fire; that then set fire to the hydrogen. So now they don’t use flammable dope and also use Helium instead of Hydrogen
MD
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 12:24 AMHindenburg they learned that landing an airship in a lightening storm is dangerous. (Apart from the flammable fuel load it carrried which did the damage…)
Again, so this is real useful at non kelvin type temperature ranges..
Speculation on the uses of a just-discovered, scientifically debatable property of Hydrogen doesn’t make anything happen faster.
Note: Mercury is a metal, and it is liquid in our world (solid below -38.9 C), Other metals have a low melting point (eg sodium, cesium and cesium, but they are still metals when molten… So the state of the material doesn’t affect its metal like properties.
Keep the science happening